CBBC Newsround | TV/Film | Blue Peter name book award winner
Man On The Moon by Simon Bartram has been voted the overall winner of the Blue Peter Book Awards. It was also the best picture book to read aloud.
Montmorency by Eleanor Updale won the 'book I couldn't put down' category, and The Ultimate Book Guide by Daniel Hahn the 'best book with facts' category.
Here's a link to the blogged shortlists, so that you can remind yourself which books are contenders, ahead of the announcement tomorrow (Friday) at 5pm.
In addition to Kenneth Oppel winning a Governor General award for his novel Airborn (see entry for 16 November), Stephane Jorisch has been awarded his third Governor General illustration award (he has won previously in 1993 and 1999) for Jabberwocky (Kids Can Press):
Andrea Deakin writes:
Stephane Jorisch's rendering of Jabberwocky is not for young children, there are other editions more suitable for them. This is a version for secondary students or students at college or university, not little ones. That stated, it is a challenging and gripping exercise for the imagination. Limbless ex-soldiers stand before rows of television sets on which an officer is backed by a text,"Beware the Jabberwock". An old soldier sends his son, a dress designer, off to tackle this enemy. When his son returns victorious "Callooh! Callay!" is cried out from a hospital bed where the old man lies dying; and the whole ends with the old soldier's funeral. Alice found the poem hard to understand, she would certainly have had trouble with this version. This is an interpretation that contains clues only truly accessible to those who have lived a little and are cognizant of repressive invasive societies and war. The illustrations explore war, the freedom to do as you wish, the right to be creative in a militarized world. The overwhelming presence of television comments on the influence of the media and the power of this influence in the wrong hands. Ink drawings, splashes of sombre shades of colour challenge the reader to see and then to see again. Powerful, dramatic, an outstanding interpretation, Jorisch's visual narrative is for an older, more sophisticated audience.
Kenneth Oppel confessed to a seminal movie moment Monday after accepting the 2004 Governor General's children's literature prize for his latest novel, Airborn. "Someone asked me what the most memorable event in my childhood was - it was at a book conference, too - and I scandalously said it was seeing Star Wars for the first time," said the 37-year old Toronto author."Some people got quite mortified that I would even dare to say this at a book festival. But it was true."
Recomended - Report of acceptance speech given by Canadian author, Kenneth Oppel, on receiving the 2004 Governor General's children's literature prize for his latest novel, Airborn.
Andrea Deakin writes of Airborn:
In the alternative world of Kenneth Oppel's Airborn luxury airships fly over the Pacificus, operating only in charted skies. Matt Cruse, fifteen-years-old, is a cabin boy on the Aurora. He is following in his dead father's footsteps, training to be a sailmaker and, if fortune smiles, a captain. When we first meet him he is undertaking the daring rescue of an elderly balloonist who speaks, in his dying moments, of beautiful winged cat-like creatures,"Kate would've loved them". A year later Kate de Vries, the granddaughter of the balloonist, comes aboard as a passenger. Through the sharing of her grandfather's diary the two become close friends who face danger together as air pirates board the Aurora, leaving her badly damaged. A storm forces the battered airship to set down on a desert island. Oppel's invention is totally convincing. It is a world in which the "what ifs" of invention have come to pass; in which a Nineteenth Century swashbuckling adventure can come true and feel true. In Airborn masterly storytelling offers mystery, adventure, discovery and growth. It is a tale in which courage, quick thinking and loyalty exuberantly succeed.
A moment with ... Deb Caletti, writer
This is dream week for Deb Caletti, a 41-year-old Issaquah writer who is one of five finalists for the National Book Award in young adult fiction for her second novel, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (Simon & Schuster, 308 pages, $15.95). Caletti will be in New York City for the gala awards ceremony on Wednesday evening.
WHITBREAD BOOK AWARDS - CHILDREN'S BOOK SHORTLIST
Anne Cassidy - Looking for JJ (Scholastic Children's Books)
Geraldine McCaughrean - Not the End of the World (Oxford University Press)
Meg Rosoff - How I Live Now (Puffin Books)
Ann Turnbull - No Shame, No Fear (Walker Books)
The Eleanor Farjeon Award was presented (in London, last night) to Jacqueline Wilson. At the presentation she revealed that her legendary collection of books is currently boxed up while she is in the process of moving in to a larger house, which previously belonged to a dentist.
The Eleanor Farjeon Award rewards outstanding achievement in children?s books. It is awarded to an individual in recognition of their distinguished contribution to the world of children?s books. The winner is chosen from nominations from members of the Children?s Book Circle ? entries are not required.
Past winners:
2003 Miriam Hodgson, editorial consultant at Egmont
2002 Philip Pullman for his 'crusading advocacy' of the children's book world
2001 Amelia Edwards (Children's Book Designer)
2000 Julia Eccleshare (children's book editor at The Guardian)
1999 Klaus Flugge (publisher at Andersen Press)
1998 Gina Pollinger
1997 Michael Rosen
1996 Books for Keeps
1995 Helen Paiba
1994 Eileen Colwell
1993 Susan Belgrave
1992 Stephanie Nettell
1991 Patricia Crampton
1990 Jill Bennett
1989 Anna Home
1988 National Library for the Handicapped Child
1987 Valerie Bierman
1986 Judith Elkin
1985 Bob Leeson
1984 Shirley Hughes
1983 Jean Russell
1982 Aiden & Nancy Chambers
1981 Margaret Marshall and Virginia Jensen
1980 Dorothy Butler
1979 Joy Whitby
1978 Peter Kennerley
1977 Elaine Moss
1976 Joyce Oldmeadow and Court Oldmeadow
1975 Naomi Lewis
1974 Leila Berg
1973 Eleanor Graham
1972 Janet Hill
1971 Margaret Meek
1970 Kaye Webb
1969 Anne Wood
1968 Brian Alderson
1967 Jessica Jenkins
1966 Margery Fisher
[extracted from a Press Release]
HarperCollins UK have won the LIMA Licensee Publisher of the Year Award for the second consecutive year.
Sally Gritten, Managing Director of HarperCollins Children's Books, says "To win the award once was good - to win it twice is fantastic. It really shows that we are the UK's Number 1 publisher of children's properties - that we have the vision, talent and resources to truly do justice to the incredible publishing licenses we hold.'
The Properties division's star performance has been helped by its stable of thoroughbred children's publishing properties including Noddy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tractor Tom, Narnia and Mary-Kate and Ashley, as well as film tie-in publishing to the movie blockbusters Cat in the Hat, Spiderman 2 and Thunderbirds.
One of 2004' s star performers has been Dr. Seuss - which has been celebrating the 'Seussentenial', 100 years since the birth of Theodore Geisel (aka Dr Seuss). As well as throwing the world's biggest birthday party in libraries up and down the country, Dr. Seuss' sales figures have increased year on year by 38%.
